Our full review for Angels & Demons will be up tomorrow, but after watching A&D – which isn’t exactly a sequel to the filmed-first/written-last The Da Vinci Code but rather a discrete, “further adventures in code-cracking” installment – we were rather struck by its international flavor. Despite a location set almost entirely in Vatican City, very few of A&D‘s leads or supporting players were portrayed by any actual Italians.

Cases in point**: Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer as an Italian physicist; Swedish Stellan Skarsgård as the head of the Swiss guard; and American actor Dave Pasquesi (of Chicago improv duo TJ and Dave) as a Vatican lawyer doing his best with lines like, “What is word? Formi-dable“. (How come in the movies whenever someone says, “How you say…” it’s always for a word that translates almost exactly the same in English? Just once I’d like somebody to puzzle over how to translate defenestrate. Or xerophagy.)

But our favorite non-Italian player would be Danish actor Nicolaj Lie Kass, who plays a bespectacled assassin. We didn’t recognize him at first – in fact, we lost some time wondering if Dan from Real World: Miami had gotten into acting – but when we put two and two together, we realized he was the awesomely talented and brooding star of Susanne Bier‘s Open Hearts and Brothers (see clip below).

** Wait, we forgot one: Tom Hanks plays a guy who speaks largely in the ancient language of gibberish.

This article appears in May 8 • 2009.

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A graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Kimberley has written about film, books, and pop culture for The Austin Chronicle since 2000. She was named Editor of the Chronicle in 2016; she previously served as the paper’s Managing Editor, Screens Editor, Books Editor, and proofreader. Her work has been awarded by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for excellence in arts criticism, team reporting, and special section (Best of Austin). The Austin Alliance for Women...